


cold, cold hands

by impossibletruths



Series: vigilance; victory; sacrifice [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 11:10:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17827472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: A late night conversation between the newest Warden and the newest member of the party.





	cold, cold hands

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted to [tumblr](https://cityandking.tumblr.com/post/169794234082/cold-cold-hands)

She sits at the edge of camp with cloth and oil and whetstone, focused on the blade in her hands. She does not so much as glance up when he settles next to her. The others watch––Alistair’s gaze burns particularly hot on the back of his neck––but they do not make to approach, for reasons he does not yet understand.

Perhaps they have the right sense of things, but what can he say? He’s curious about the slight woman who has the most powerful men in Ferelden frightened.

“You are far away, my friend,” he tells her when he has been sitting near her for time enough to finish with one blade and move to the other and she has not yet acknowledged him. The whetstone rasps loud in the quiet night air. Hers are good weapons he notes, well-made and well-used and well-kept. She handles them with the easy efficiency of someone who knows the pointy end from the pommel quite well.

“I am right here,” she replies without looking up, and he does not bother to hide his smile. It is remarkable how much she reminds him of the Qunari.

“And your thoughts?”

Her steady rhythm stutters along the blade. “What do you care for my thoughts?”

“It cannot do any good to remain lost among them.”

She meets his gaze, face still, as though she were carved of ivory. “Am I lost?”

“So it seems. But I am only an observer.” She remains staring, and he changes tactics. “There are also, I hear, worth a pretty penny.”

Ah, there, the flicker of a smile at the crease of her lips. “Are you looking to buy them, then?”

“Only if you are willing to part with them. If not, I shall leave, and you may forget I ever troubled you with my presence.”

“You are no trouble, Zevran,” she says, almost idle, and her attention returns to her blades. She sets aside the whetstone and takes up an oiled cloth in its place. He waits, patient. He guards enough troubles of his own to know the look of someone weighed down by looming worries.

“I made a poor decision today,” she says, finally. Her hands move methodically over her blade and she does not look up to meet his eyes. Zevran blinks.

“Saving the boy?”

“Yes.” Her voice bites. “It was a bad call. I should not have been so weak.”

“He is alive, and his mother too. Surely we did well?”

“We were lucky,” she disagrees. “And foolish.”

“What would you have done?” he asks. “Killed the child?”

She does not so much as flinch. “Yes. It would have been safer for all. A cleaner solution.”

He cannot honestly argue with that. “They why did you not?”

He catches the shadow of something almost a smile, the sickle curve of her mouth as she twists her hands around the cloth she holds.

“Alistair wants to meet his sister.”

He does not, in truth, wholly understand the connection. But then, he does not quite understand the ties between the two Wardens. It does not take eyes to see something deep tethers them together, but he is hard-pressed to put a name to their bond. Kinship, perhaps. Sorrow.

Or maybe it is simply one of those odd Grey Warden things. There are, he is learning, quite a few of those.

She sighs noisily and loosens her grip on the rag, running it gently along the blade. “It is no matter. It is done. I will do better in the future.”

“I do not know if you care for my opinions, but it seems you did a good thing. I do not think that is wrong.”

“That is a nice thought, Zevran.”

“But foolish for an assassin, no?”

Her smile this time is a proper one, and something in him is glad to see it. She looks alive, eyes crinkling, mouth a bow. The ivory stillness bleeds away.

He has thought her beautiful since he saw her upon the road and knew he was to kill her, distant and cold and lovely. He had not realized she was pretty too.

“Yes.”

Ah, well. At least she does not sugarcoat it.

“What can I say? I am a romantic. I believe in the great heroes, and that good shall triumph, and that I shall one day be paid very handsomely and retire to a beautiful island where the Crows will never find me. A nice idea, no?”

“I am a Grey Warden,” she tells him steadily. She speaks as though reciting something she once heard, and the tone twists his stomach. “I made a vow and I will honor it: I will fight so long as I am able, and then I will die.”

“And will you not have anything beautiful in your life of duty?”

“It does not do to hope for things that cannot be,” she tells him, voice quiet, and when she meets his eyes the quiet hurt there is enough to swallow a man. She smiles, small and crooked and empty. “I walk a different path.”

Then her gaze shutters, and her mask returns, and she looks down again.

“I would like to be alone,” she tells him cooly, and he stands without question, and only then hesitates. She cocks her head in his direction, still focused on the blade in her lap. “Yes?”

“Be well, Warden,” he murmurs, and leaves her at the flickering edge of the firelight. Alistair meets his gaze, and Zevran realizes in that moment he knows too. Perhaps that is their bond––something grand as duty and deep as sorrow and simple as an oath.

The crackling fire flickers and sighs, and Zevran finds himself short of words for the rest of the night. But he does not turn in until she does, and even then he cannot help but wonder what it is he has gotten himself into.

Though. Better than being dead, really. He can work with that.


End file.
